Short Story:  Hunting Sigma
by SilusCrow
Summary: A Fallout 3 short story on the last moments of the Sigma Squad as they try to hunt down an invisible stalker aboard the Mobile Carrier Base.  Based off of in-game events.  Rated M for violence and swearing.


Author's Note: This short story is based off of a session of Fallout 3. It takes place during Broken Steel, near the end of the DCL.

* * *

Location: Andrews Air Force Base, Enclave Mobile Crawler Base

"Sir, we have a security breach." The Enclave officer looked up at his commanding officer, a confused and worried look on his face. "We've had reports of...someone running rampant throughout the Air Base. Reports are unclear, but we assume it's the Brotherhood."

"What sort of rampant are we talking about here?" asked the commanding officer.

"Um," said the officer, considering how to word his response. "Well sir, we've lost about nine Vertibirds, several squads, and an unknown number of non-combatants."

"From one person? Who the hell is this person?" The commanding officer turned away, rubbing his temples, considering what to do. "Where's the breach?" he asked after a moment.

"Um, first level of the Crawler sir," replied the officer.

"Right, who's down there that can handle this?" The commanding officer scanned his subordinate's screen, and pointed at a listing. "Send Squad Sigma."

"Yes sir," replied the officer, who then began to relay orders to the elite squad.

The force-field separating the lower levels from the upper levels dropped, and Squad Sigma moved into the repair bay that dominated the first level of the Crawler Base. They totaled six-Eli, David, Willis, and Lewis wielding standard issue laser rifles, Caleb in the new Hellfire armor wielding an Incinerator, and the squad leader, Victor in Tesla armor and armed with a plasma rifle.

"Spread out," ordered Victor through his helmet, "Search the area. Keep in contact."

The squad acknowledged the order and began to fan out through the fairly sparse floor. They moved slowly, carefully, weapons at the ready, one eye on their surroundings, one eye on their squad mates.

"Sir, this section is cle-GUGLH!" David's report was cut short with a pained gurgle, and a moment later, the sound of his armored body hitting the metal floor. The squad immediately fell back to where David last was. What they found made their blood run cold.

The armored corse on the ground was headless. The cut looked clean, and had sliced clear through the Enclave Power Armor. The squad stared in horror at the bloody mess. They had been careful. They has swept the area so carefully, so thoroughly.

"What in the..." muttered Eli.

"Hehehe..." Somewhere on the floor came an echoing giggle of a little girl.

"Defensive formation!" ordered Victor, and the squad positioned themselves back-to-back, watching for signs of movement.

"Hehehehe," went the giggling again, this time followed by the pitter-patter of feet on the metal floor. Then something clattered to the floor, having been tossed from behind of of the metal dividers. It was David's severed head, still in it's helmet.

"You bastard!" yelled Willis, who broke formation and charged towards there the head had come from.

"Willis! Back in formation!" barked Victor, but the soldier didn't listen. Around the corner he charged, his feet visible between the break in the divider. "Come out you bastard!" bellowed Willis. He took a potshot at the floor, stomped and yelled more.

"Eli, go get Willis back here."

Eli nodded and moved slowly towards the divider to retrieve his squad mate. As he rounded the corner, something struck. It was an invisible shape. Small, nimble. The thing spear tackled Eli from the front with enough force to knock him over on his back. The thing straddled the soldier and plunged something into the man's chest, breaching the Power Armor like a boxer punching through tissue paper. Again and again the thing tore into the soldier, even past the point of expiration. It had turned rather quickly from a quick kill to a butcher-fest of blood, gore and armor shards.

"Open fire!" barked Victor as he opened up with his plasma rifle at the blood-splattered, invisible stalker. As soon as the words left his mouth however, the attacker leapt off the butchered form of Eli and was gone once again.

"Stage-diving Jesus Christ!" swore Caleb. "What the fucking fuck was that?"

"Keep it together!" ordered Victor, and Caleb shifted himself in his Power Armor, obviously uncomfortable with the whole situation. "It's only one person! We are Sigma Squad! It shouldn't be this hard to take out one pers-"

Victor's voice cut off suddenly. Willis, who had since returned from around the divider, looked up from the butchered form of Eli, his gaze following that of Lewis and Caleb. Victor was standing, shaking ever so slightly, as if he was too cold or something. Then they noticed the blood and the holes in his armor. With an audible "Shink!", the invisible weapon, or weapons, removed themselves from the squad leader. That would have been sufficient, but the butcher wanted to make a spectacle of their kill. Victor's arm rose up as if propelled by some unseen force, and with a "Shlish", off went his arm in a shower of blood. Being quicker on the draw than his compatriots, Willis opened fire with his laser rifle, but the red laser beam only hit air. The invisible attacker had gotten away again.

Now the squad was in total chaos. Half their number was dead, including their commanding officer. Each of the remaining soldiers-Willis, Lewis and Caleb-were all thinking the same thing.

_This couldn't possibly get worse._

And of course, they were wrong. Not a minute after Victor's dead and partial dismemberment, the lights went out with an audible "Vweeeeooooom". Someone swore loudly, cursing God, fate, Lady Luck, whoever was responsible for putting them in this situation, to be hunted down and butchered for some form of sick entertainment.

Caleb, unlike Willis and Lewis, managed to maintain his cool, but only just. When the lights had gone out, he had gotten jumpy. He waved his Incinerator back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse of the thing that had taken his squad apart. However, he never got to find it, as his head was sliced into four neat slices by attacker, their weapon cutting neatly through the Hellfire Armor's helmet.

Willis was still enraged from his squad mates being butchered, so much so that he barely registered the sound of Caleb's corpse hitting the ground, or the sound of heavy weapons soldier's brains falling out of the slices of skull. No, he was busy hunting his prey in the dark, too busy to mourn his dead friends. Too busy to register the continued giggling and the pitter-patter of feet. He wasn't too busy, however, to take notice when the stalker rammed their weapons through his back and ripped out the lower half of his spinal cord.

Lewis was the last one alive, and unlike his previously living buddies, Lewis took to hiding, or at least getting defensive. He had backed himself against a wall and shoved a set of crates into place to make a makeshift barricade. He hunkered down, rifle in hand, intent on killing this monster that had butchered 5/6ths of the Sigma Squad, the Enclave's elite squad in the Capital Wasteland.

Pitter-patter.

Pitter-patter.

Lewis swung his rifle left and right, his eyes wide behind his helmet. He tried to pay attention to everything in sight. A spec of dust floating through the air. The blood of his friends dripping through the grating on the floor. The sound of the incessant pitter-patter of the attacker's feet and the echoing giggling. Oh God, the giggling was the worst part of it. It was both disturbing and mocking, like the attacker WANTED him to hear them coming, to know that it was his death that was coming ever closer.

And then, the giggling stopped, as did the pitter-patter of feet. And for a moment, Lewis let his guard down, but just for a moment. And a moment was all the butcher needed. From above, from the overhanging wires, air ducts and rebar the attacker struck, landing of Lewis' back and digging their weapons into his collar bones, prying his head from his shoulders with a sickening squelching sound and the cracking and ripping of bones and tendons.

The attacker, satisfied that their work was done, dropped the severed head, stepped away from the corpse, and walked over to a wall. On the wall was a power box, and the thing flipped a switch. After a moment, the lights came back on, revealing a blood soaked scene that wouldn't have been out of place in a horror movie. Walking back to the center of the room, the attacker pressed a button located just below their left breast.

The cloaking field that had concealed the attacker dissipated, revealing the monster in all their blood-stained glory. There, amongst the bodies of the Enclave's elite, stood a young girl, no older than twelve with light brown eyes and shoulder length blonde hair, stained here and there with blood. She wore a fairly skin-tight suit of black material with a Vault Security vest over it, and a red bandana around her neck. Her arms were dominated by a pair of metal and leather sleeves that ran up to her shoulders, and ended in a pair of Deathclaw Gauntlets, strapped to the sleeves with medical braces and leather belts. Carefully, the young girl knuckled a com link situated in her left ear.

"Ok ma'am, the first floor is clear."

* * *

Outside, waiting in the flight control tower, stood a young woman, no older than 19, along with four other young girls, all no older than 13. The older woman was decked out in a patchwork of armor-a bit of raider gear here, some slaver bits there, a chestplate from some combat armor, and a wide-brimmed hat covering her short red hair.

"We read you Zivey, we'll be coming in shortly," replied the older woman, Marriette. Turning to the four, she spoke to each in turn.

"Sil, I want you cover us from here," she said to a dark haired young girl wearing a duplicate of the suit Zivey wore, except she also wore a breastplate from a suit of combat armor and a targeting assist over her right eye. The young girl looked up from the scope of her massive sniper rifle, a Barrett .50-caliber rifle outfitted with a silencer, laser sight and an extended clip. She nodded in affirmation, then went back to scanning the flight line for targets.

"Fiv, Zex," said Marriette to the two girls in question, "You''l be on point with me and working as middle-guard." Fiv was decked out in a stitched together pre-war suit adorned with various bags and ammo clips, and her boots were reinforced with metal plating. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and dyed a light sky blue, and wore a similar targeting array over her right eye, much like Sil. Zex also wore a targeting array, and was dressed in a black suit and skirt adorned with various bits of equipment. Her light brown hair fell down to just above her shoulders, just brushing the red bandana she wore around her neck. Both were armed with sub-machine guns fixed with silencers and laser sights. They both nodded in unison and moved to the door to await their leader.

"Foww," said Mary, turning to the last member, "You'll be rear guard. Anyone sneaks up on us, you mow them down." The blonde, pigtailed girl nodded. Foww was the Heavy Weapons expert on the team, and was the only one that could effectively use them, thanks to the custom power armor she wore. She had been crippled when she was younger, and the people at Rivet City patched her up, fixed her legs with cybernetics, and allowed her to walk. The cybernetics also provided extra stability, thus allowing her to handle the recoil of the heavy weapons she employed. Picking up her minigun from where it lay on the floor, she made her way towards the door and awaited her boss.

Before turning to leave, Marriette took one last good look at the Mobile Crawler Base. She knew from the briefing she had received from the Brotherhood that it was brimming with Enclave soldiers. She smiled at the thought. Just one of her girls had torn through the best the Enclave had to offer. There was no way they'd be prepared for the shitstorm that was about to descend on them.

"Ok girls, let's go play with the nice Enclave people." All the girls present, along with Zivey on the com link, gave a cold chuckle.

* * *

Author's note: I do hope you enjoyed this little one-shot. The characters presented here are/were actual characters I employed in my PC version of Fallout 3, thanks to the Shojo Companion mod, among various others (Tailor Maid, FOOK, ect. ect.).


End file.
